All right, lots of people still coming in. Um, as we we're actually going to go ahead and get started as we go through. So, welcome to our webinar on tips for a successful upgrade. Um, and really these are just these are strategies that we're going to be talking about about how to help you plan successfully for a very smooth, efficient upgrade with with minimizing any stress that comes through. Uh, as we get started, every webinar I talk on, I drop I drop something about what's going to come in the future that's coming through. If you really want to know, make sure you come to to knowledge and join us in a few weeks in Vegas. Uh, but I wanted to make sure that if we do talk about anything that's coming uh post Yokohama that you're making your purchasing decisions of service now only on what we've already released, which is what we've released through Yokohama. Uh this is part of a session on uh from live at service now about lots of live webinars that go on and different 360 exchanges where you can talk to other customers and partners about how to get the most out of service now. Uh you're here so I think you've already you've already seen this but if not you can take a quick uh grab of this uh QR code and join us for other sessions like this on different topics related to service. Now also related to that I'm going to make my personal plug. My team in the uh outbound product management for platform runs a series of platformmies. We cover uh several different topics related to platform. If you're here, some of these are are very relevant for you. Tell your friends, your family, put it in your your holiday cards or however you want to do that. You can you can take this QR code and put it in your holiday cards like I do. Uh lots and lots of content out there that we provide live uh every week. Uh there's a session that's going on and we're looking to expand that a little bit more. More importantly, there are hundreds and hundreds of hours of archived webinars on YouTube. So if you are ever looking for some question about how do I do something related to knowledge management or process mining or platform analytics or next experience, it goes on and on and on. when you're searching for it in your favorite search engine, put in service now academy and your topic and you are going to find a webinar with one of our great team members talking about that problem that issue for for an hour. Great great archive and great resource for you to take advantage of. I have a few housekeeping suggest housekeeping comments that we need to go through before we get started. Uh, first of all, if you have questions as we're going, we are going to have Q&A at the end, but please put your questions in the Q&A box in Zoom and not just in the chat. The chat will go by and we may miss it, but if you put it in the Q&A, we'll make sure we get back to you with an answer. And at the end, we'll be going through all of all the Q&As's that we have related that we have coming in. Next, this is being recorded. We will be posting it on the Service Now community and on our YouTube channel. So, if you find something that's really interesting, you want to go back and listen to it, uh, it'll be available for you. or if you want to share this with colleagues, it will be available for you shortly. Um, and at the end of this event, we will have a short survey if you don't mind taking a few minutes and answering that for us. It helps us make these this session and other sessions better by telling us how what's working, what's not working for you. So, please take that survey when you close the webinar. It should pop up for you. Just take a couple minutes to really help us out. All right, I want to get started with our speaker introductions. Um, so, uh, today we have three of us from Service Now who are here to give you some information about how to upgrade and how to make it really smooth. We have Paige Duffy, uh, principal product success manager. I'm Adam Stout from the outbound product management team for the platform and I cover upgrades and Jeff Allen, a senior staff content portfolio manager, uh, who develops a lot of content for this. Uh so we have really great diff different perspectives on how to make these upgrades smoother for you and would want to make sure that you get get and have a chance to understand this information and again please put those questions in the Q&A so we can clarify anything you have. So we're going to get started with uh a few topics. First thing is what do you need to do to upgrade? What why are we upgrading and what needs to go through? We're going to talk about upgra uh governance for those upgrades. Really really key is to set yourself up. It is more than just a tooling uh a tooling issue. We want to make sure that you set your organization up to upgrade today and and keep going forward. A few of the things we want to make sure you're aware of to avoid any gotchas, no surprises. Again, those really smooth upgrades. Um and then we're going to have some extra tools that I want to make sure you're aware of that you can go look at. We're not going to dive uh deeply into some of these extra tools, but I want to make sure you're aware of them and you can go look at some more content whether it's in thosemies, whether it's in now learning to explore what's available for you. Okay, so let's talk about uh planning and scheduling upgrades. So we're uh we've just released Yokohama in March. Uh it's April, so it came out very recently. And then Service Now generally has an N minus2 support pro process policy. um that does differ between some customers. So, make sure you talk to your account executive if you're unclear whether you're on N minus one or N minus2 or or something else. But generally, we're on N minus2. That's what you'll hear that's what you'll hear us talking about. Which means that as we've released Yokohama, we're supporting Xanadu and the Washington release. But if you were on Vancouver or Utah, there's no longer support for Vancouver and Utah. So, you want to make sure that you're on uh at least Washington or Xanadu or Yoka and ideally Yokohama today as we're going through. If you're not in Yokohama, we definitely want to be talking about how do you get get there as soon as possible. If you're on Vancouver, you want to get there. There is a process to upgrade you. You don't want to do that. We want to make sure that you're in control. You have the dates. You know what's going on. Um and so the smoothest upgrade possible is the one that you initiate. Um, so I have a quick poll as we get started so we can make sure we tune this up appropriately. If I can make sure that I know how to do the poll we're launching. Here we go. I'm going to launch a quick poll as we're talking about this. Um, what version are you on? So, we do want to talk about uh we want to make sure that this is relevant to you. If everybody's on Yokohama, that's great. There's still some things that you can learn. Uh, but if you're on Washington or or Xandum, we want to see that. everybody here. I This is the fastest clicking audience I've ever had for a webinar on the poll. So, uh, great response rate to come through. Uh, I'm going to go ahead and end the poll, but what I'm seeing is we have, uh, the big majority of everybody is on Xanad, so a decent chunk on Washington. A few of us gogetters are on Yokohama already, and then a few other people are on on Vancouver. Actually, we'll go ahead and go ahead and share that as we come through. Uh, a lot of us on Xanadoo in Washington. Great. we will target it to that on what we're going to Yokohama for. All right. Uh so now let's talk about um about what's going on when I upgrade. So when I upgraded the first thing that happened was I went after after I upgraded my upgraded completed I went to the application manager. When I went to the application manager, I saw 159 store applications that were ready for update that had available updates for me. This caused me some heartburn and some stress because I had just upgraded. I just upgraded and I come to the application manager and I see these 159 more updates available. If this happens, it happens to me. If it when it happens to you, it's okay. But the most important thing I want you to get from this webinar is that's okay. Think of these as optional updates that have come in. When you upgrade to Yokohama, you're going to get all of the store apps and all the versions that come through are going to be upgraded to compatible versions of the Yokohama. If something if a store app you had was not upgraded or it was not compatible with Yokohama, it will be upgraded as part of that family release. But after I've upgraded to Yokohama, I have many many other optional upgrades that come through. And why that is is how we bundle our updates specifically from the store. So all plugins are upgraded with the family release. That's what a family release is is all the plugins being upgraded. But we true up our store releases into our family updates in a in a slightly offset cycle. So when Yokohama came out in March, there was a store release in February. I actually think it was actually January 30th, but let's call it February. It came out in February, a store release. Those updates that came out in February are not included in Yokohama. They are optional updates to go with Yokohama. A lot of them are compatible with with Xanadu um and Washington so that you could update them in you could install them even if you haven't done your Yokohama release, but they're optional. What is in Yokohama is everything in the store up through our November store release. So we do four store releases a year. Uh February, May, August, and November. Hope I got that right. are Q1 2 3 and 4 with our family releases coming out in as we saw in the previous timeline coming in in March and September. So what I have is that February store release everything we released in February 25 that is going to be in Zurich which will release in September. Everything that comes out in May coming out very very shortly that's uh also going to be in Zurich in September but the things that come out in August will will be in Australia in the next release. And the same thing happened with Yokohama. what came out last May in May of 24. We came out November uh in August of 24 and November uh of 20 24 that is all into Yokohama. So the store releases store updates you have are just slightly older stable that come through and it'll let you do that one big upgrade to come through and you have all those optional upgrades. Now I want to talk about how do you prioritize which upgrades to do? There's 159 of them. I I don't like to read everything that goes through and click through all those things. So what I do, what I suggest that you do to understand what do you want to upgrade is start with the upgrade release the upgrade kit for each release. So I have links down here really short links uh sn.workupgradetoolkit noama. I am I create these. They are I am not creative. So when Zurich comes out I bet you can guess what the Zurich one is. A few of these are are available in the past as well. Uh the official way to get this is to go to the service now community. When you go to the community and you click on um products at the top, you'll see releases and up and upgrades. When you go there, you'll see the screen that's over on the right where you can go down to the upgrade kit. This generally comes out the same week as GA. So, this came out in March of 25. Again, go to releases and upgrades in the community and you can get that. Lots of other great content there. So, if you haven't looked around there, do take a look and you'll see a lot of the videos and demos about what's being released in in that release in Yokohama. But when you go to the upgrade kit, you are going to get around a 200page PDF of all of the highlights that came out in service. If you want a smooth upgrade, if you want the latest and greatest features, go look that look through that. Spend two hours twice a year to look through that. It's lots of hyperlinks to go through so that if you want to jump right to CSM, you can do that. If you want to jump to platform, you can do that. You want to jump to HR, you can do that. Look at those at those sections. I highly recommend you look through everything. Even if you are not currently subscribed to HR, look at the HR section. Great content to see what's possible, what what's happening with Service Now. Um, lots of pictures, lots of screenshots. Great way to get motivated and go, "Oh, that's really neat. I want that." If you have CSM and you see something in CSM, you're probably entitled to it already. You could go activate it in one of your subrods and take a look at it. If it's something you're not entitled to, maybe you want to count call your account rep and say, "Hey, can I get a demo of this? Looks looks really interesting." It is the menu in that upgrade kit of everything that's available. When you upgrade, many things don't turn on. We we try to minimize the change in an upgrade. So, we're going to upgrade the things that need to upgrade. A lot of the platform stuff will will upgrade, but some things you'll want to turn on, whether it's through a property, whether it's activating a new store app. Using the upgrade kit, helps you understand what is it I want, and then you can quickly find out how to get there. The next place I look at is the uh adoption blueprints. So, when I go, if I'm logged in as admin and I go to the admin menu at the top, it'll bring me to the ad um all of the quick admin tools that I need. One of those is adoption blueprints. And the adoption blueprints help me focus in on what am I trying to do and it tells you how do you get there? If I once I've identified which adoption blueprints what my goals are that I want to go through, the adoption blueprints are incredibly useful for me to get there by activating the things that are there. But as those get updated, I'm able to see new plugins that help me achieve that same goal and also updates. So in the screenshot that we see here, which is a little bit blurry, I already have my services operations workspace installed and and activated, but as I go to the blueprint, it'll go there's an update available. Oh, then I want that. So rather than reading 159 different descriptions and deciding what do I want, I go to the upgrade kit and it gives me the big menu and I go, I want that. It'll tell me what I need to have. I go to the adoption blueprints, it'll tell me what what I need to have, what's available for the things that I'm interested in doing. And then the third place that I go is just use the tool. So as you're doing your UAT, as you're doing your your smoke test and your of the upgrades, look through the applications you're using and you'll see many of them will tell you if there's an upgrade available. So adoption blueprints in this case actually is telling me, hey, there's an update available for for this. So I upgraded Yokohama and there's immediately an update for this that I do want to activate. So I've done the the major family upgrade and then I'm going to I'm going to go cherrypick a few store updates that I want. workflow studios like this. Our G now assist stuff is like this. And if you want that latest February release, you can go do that. This happens also as we get into May. So in a couple more weeks, if you're on Yokohama, you'll see things saying, "Hey, there's an update available for this." So make sure you're listening to your users, whether you're doing it or your users are going through, go, "Hey, if you're using an app, there's an update available. Go look at it and go see if you want it." It'll take me to the app manager. I can then click through and see, do I want to activate that? All right. So that is why we need to upgrade. It's some tools that you can have to figure out how you prioritize what you want to upgrade and when. And I want to hand it over to Jeff to talk about some leading practices for how we make that upgrade smooth. Uh thanks Adam. Actually that's that uh opening is a great leadin because you've already talked about a number of elements that are part of a process, part of a preparation for an upgrade. So let's kind of follow into that. So you know governance um is a term that sometimes is can be a little overwhelming for an organization. Everybody starts to think about these heavy processes and you know a lot of organizations don't think they have the time and budget to invest in it. So let's look at that a little bit more closely and see what we've got. So let's uh let's stay on this slide for a second. So uh just as Oh go back. Yeah. Um so just as all organizations um need governance for the overall IT estate within that we of course recommend having a solid framework uh for decision-m that aligns the organization's mission and strategic objectives in support of the service now environment which of course is part of the IT estate. It's all about establishing a framework for effective management. So we see governance broadly in three categories as you see uh over overall steering and oversight, technical oversight, demand oversight. You know, governance like I said can seem like a scary word, but done right. Uh it doesn't have to be overly heavy. At a high level, it really helps realize outcomes. That's obviously the primary objective, but while doing so, it also helps you manage risk, establishing ways of working and maintaining compliance. So those are all important elements and it establishes the oversight of the technical environment and processes and establishes how to respond to requested changes to the environment. So your demand side and you know every application change every upgrade is a change right? So you need to address that right. So let's go to the next slide. So let's look at uh kind of how found governance lays the foundation. uh it uh especially as it relates to you know to an upgrade it can set the scope and timing of the upgrade right as uh Adam already showed you've got this regular cadence but you got to decide how that's going to work for your organization as again as Adam said the best way to do this is as according to how you plan and execute right so you want to be able to control of that it helps align and allocate the resources that are needed uh financial and and otherwise um and by overseeing the technical processes uh you can ensure effective testing which is super important and governance helps ensure effective and repeatable execution of upgrades and we'll talk about that a little bit more. So governance ensures the business data is protected. Governance promotes communication and collaboration to make sure that the process is smooth. So so you're nobody's kind of left out right so anytime you uh make changes to the environment as I said you really you've got risks right any application in upgrades. upgrades are are not any different in that respect and so as a result they introduce potential risk. Uh but if you've got governance in play then it ensures that your risk management elements and your security uh measures are in place throughout the upgrade process. So you manage those properly. So does that kind of make sense how you know governance really is a foundational element of performing upgrades right? So, all right, let's uh let's go on to the next slide, then. I want to u camp out on this one uh for a little bit. So, upgrades, you know, can be complex, right? And if you're newer to Service Now platform, I see, you know, in the the first poll, at least you'all are fairly close to current on on the on the releases. So, that's great. But especially if you're new to the platform, you need to get used to the regular cadence, right? As as again as Adam showed on the slide earlier, they're going to come at you fast, right? If it's not the family release, it's going to be the store releases of the apps that you've got uh in entitlement to and as you mature in your use of the platform, you're going to expand your use of the platform. So, there's going to be more involved in it. So, releases will uh come at you fast and you need to to prepare for them. Uh and as a kind of a personal note um as a customer I led the implementation of service now uh platform. I own the platform for a few years and during the course of that time we did you know half a dozen or more upgrades uh and we were able to do that with relatively little pain because we ended up implementing some governance processes some automated testing to make sure that things were handled in a routine and regular managed basis. And so if you use those tools and we'll uh Paige will talk about that a little bit more uh that are in platform that'll make it uh easier as well. So the key item here is top bullet. It's really essential to do this as a repeatable process. Uh the processes have established roles and responsibilities. They have repeatable flow that's followed uh with expected and measurable end results. It helps keep everyone accountable and also ensures everyone is really working toward the same goal. That's what you want. So in addition governance sets the standards and policies you know that are the technical orientation that are used in the process and one of the most important things that governance uh can do as we mentioned touched on earlier is manage risk. So this means ensuring from a technical perspective that you've got uh the repeatable consistent processes followed. It means you've got effective testing procedures and you follow them and then also uh plan execution and communication are key during the upgrades. uh governance helps ensure that everyone is staying in those loop uh on on the on the ver upgrades as they occur. So stakeholders can collaborate, make decisions to keep things moving forward, creating open uh communication channels. And and the last bullet there is essential too. Uh it's kind of overlooked often times uh and that is that when you get through your upgrade, you also always want to have a retrospective, right? You always want to continue to learn and improve. And as I mentioned, you're going to keep adding things to your platform. And as you do that, the the the elements in the upgrade process are going to have to continue to grow. So you want to make sure you continue to have an improvement process supporting that, right? All right. So let's uh go ahead and move on to the next slide. And let's drill in a little bit closer to the communication aspect. Uh again, it's great for any project. It's it's a kind of a cornerstone for project management. And you know where there is a project management aspect to upgrades, we really want to couch that in the terms of a repeatable process project. And that's where governance can also come in to help out to make sure as with any good project, you've got a communication plan and make sure that everybody is uh understanding how they can stay in the loop. It outlines it all. Who needs to be communicated uh about what, when, and how. Those are all elements that need to be understood and and executed and they get the right info at the right time. So it helps minimize misunderstandings. It helps um you know reduce confusions that might occur because you got every big organization you you know that can happen. But with governance everybody knows you know what and how they fit into the bigger picture and encourages you know using the smart tools as well. Again you continue to evolve and and maximize the technologies there and makes you stay uh connected stay uh on top of tracking progress. So in short, governance is really about ensuring everybody's same page, working together for the same goal. So I think that kind of summarizes it. Does that make sense? Any question, comment on that, Adam or Paige? I think that's it. Have a plan, stick to it, and uh I definitely uh second the having a retrospective about what's going on. Every organization is a little bit different. Um, so we have we have guides and plans and now create where you can get started on a very on a I don't say a basic actually a lot of it's very complex and one can come through or sophisticated with all the different steps but understanding what works for you and what parts you need to uh double down on and which parts maybe you can skip because it's just not something that ran into a problem. Improving that process having a consistent process and improving it and iterating every update is is key. That's where we see the the smoothest customers are the ones who who plan and and execute. That's really true. Really true. Yeah, I would I would definitely agree with that. Um in my experience, that is the way that we had the best upgrades in my last organization. Um we take what we did last time and we would just continue to iterate and improve upon it. Um so yeah, I I was just uh I was talking to a few customers that came through. One comment that came that came clearly or one of the things that we pulled out from this was the customers who communicate more have a communication plan and communicate during the upgrades have smoother upgrades. If you don't talk and you just there's lots of applications, lots of utilities that that come through. But if you're just using the tools, there's no guarantee of of success and and smoothness. talking and planning and and communicating however that works for your organization. That is what drives smooth upgrades. That's really so true. And the more you use on the platform, the more mature and broad your use of it is, the more important that becomes. Absolutely. Yep. And we'll I'll actually be talking a little bit more about that in depth here in a few minutes. So, okay. How about now? Yeah. How about now? That's that tells you how important we think communication is. Um, so yeah. Uh so we've talked a little bit about governance boards and you know deciding when to upgrade and how to upgrade and aligning your business and communication. Um so now I'm going to cover a few things to really just kind of improve your upgrades, make it a pleasant experience and ensure they're successful. Um so the first thing is really around limiting your scope. And so what we mean here is we want to reduce the risk for your upgrade. uh we really want to ensure that that upgrade goes as smoothly as possible and that's important to your user base and your stakeholders. We want them to have a you know a warm fuzzy feeling when it comes to upgrades and not go oh god that's another upgrade I don't want to deal with this. Um so the smoother you can make that the less impactful you can make that to them the better it is. Um and it just overall improves the confidence that they have in the platform and in your team. Uh so what that really means when we're talking about limiting the scope, we're talking about no major enhancements. So you have your upgrade, you have your upgrade to your applications, but we're not doing, you know, a normal weekly Service Now release. Um we're not implementing new functionality. So as cool as the new stuff is that came out as part of the upgrade, maybe hold off on that. And not saying hold off on it for long. It could be a week. um it could be a few days, but anything that kind of gives space between your upgrade and those enhancements helps to just have again overall have that pleasant smooth upgrade experience. Um it also helps you as a um as a development team or the platform owner um to really understand what kind of impact that upgrade had. So, if you do a whole bunch of major enhancements uh and an incident comes in, is it related to the enhancement or is it related to the upgrade and try to play that game can be a little frustrating and again it it brings in that negative experience of the upgrade? Well, there were all sorts of incidents. Maybe there weren't. Maybe they were just related to those enhancements that were released because it's new functionality. Um, so you know that brings to us to point number two, but it's just really focusing on that um that upgrade experience. Uh, sorry. Um, and then the last thing, oh, sorry, the next thing. Well, this this is the fun of someone else unfortunately having to control the slides as I talk. So, I apologize. Uh, sorry, Adam. The next tip is all we can go ahead and move on to the next screen. So the next tip is around setting expectations early. So this gets back to that communication. Um so it is ensuring that those same stakeholders and user base they understand what to expect out of your up your upgrade. Uh so we can move to the next screen and we want to make that communication very clear to both the stakeholders and the user base. But it um few of the reasons why we're removing that fear of blame. So everything that goes wrong must be related to the upgrade. even if it's not. It goes back to why we limit our scope as well, but we're, you know, providing transparency so they know what we're doing and they know what we're not doing. Um, and it just again, it improves that upgrade experience. Uh, some things that you want to communicate while you're building that communication is the expectations. So again, no new plugins, no major enhancements, what the testing windows are for your stakeholders, so when to start, when to stop, where to test, um, how they report defects. So where and how and what kind of info they should provide for those defects. Uh the next is to set up an upgrade timeline and go live schedule and communicate that. So again, really heavy on the communication and transparency here. Um but you want those to be accessible. They could be accessible through something like a KB article or a um maybe it's a PowerPoint that you share out, but um you know, again, you're setting those expectations for your stakeholders. They know what's expected of them and they know what deadlines are uh have to be met and then as far as the go live schedule goes. They know what to expect the day of the go live. Um they know when to expect the instance will be back up if they want to do any sort of testing post upgrade. Um all of that really important and again provides that nice pleasant upgrade experience. All right. So the third one is around um reducing the upgrade time. So this is kind of at least for me one of those last tips around um creating that pleasant upgrade experience. So upgrade or service now is typically accessible during upgrades but there are some issues that you can run into as a user um within that upgrade window and then you know perhaps your organization has some internal change policies for large upgrade windows that you're trying to avoid. So just managing how long that upgrade is as best you can. Um and then again clearly uh communicating those expectations is incredibly helpful for that upgrade experience. Uh so the first way that we do that is we start with our clone down from production into our subproduction instance. I'm sure that we all do this pre-clone. Um if you don't, you definitely should. But if you're going or sorry pre-upgrade, if you don't, you definitely should. But um as you're doing that, it's a slightly different clone than you might normally do. Uh here I've labeled it an audit clone, but essentially you're not excluding the audit data and log data and the attachment data. Uh so typically during clones, you know, we exclude that because it's not really necessary in the subproduction instances, but for this you want to go ahead and include that data. Um it's going to provide you a more realistic idea of what the upgrade timing is because it more closely resembles your production instance. That also l leans into um you know your UAT or your testing as well. it's closer to that upgrade experience. Cannot tell you the number of times I've had an organization go in to do testing for an upgrade and they're like, "Oh, we went into this HR case and there's no um there's no email history there. Something's wrong. Something's broken. We we had to explain, no, it's not broken. We just didn't include that data." Um so this prevents that confusion as well as again it gives you a more realistic upgrade time because your instance is even closer to production. So um from there we can look at the actual upgrade duration. So we've upgraded our separate instance um after that audit clone and now we can determine how long that upgrade actually took. Um you can typically do that either through the change record or by looking at the upgrade time within the instance. It is available there. Um and then from there we can actually look at ways to shorten that upgrade time. You can see can we go back? you can see um under the upgrade summary report um some information on plugins and schema changes that took the longest during your upgrade. And so for example, if one of the plugins took an excessively long amount of time, you can see whether or not that's something that you can update in your production instance before you actually do your upgrade. Um, I have used this in the past to significantly shorten the upgrade duration for a um, for an instance by just going ahead and getting those those plugins as up to date as I could so we weren't trying to, you know, run too many updates during that upgrade. Um, so next, uh, just some kind of bonus tips. Uh, one thing to keep or to look at, uh, are skipped record rules. These are relatively new. I don't exactly remember which version they came out, but I know that they came out after um after I joined Service Now, and they are one of my favorite things that have come out. But they allow you to define uh skipped records or sorry, rules for skipped records. So, if you've ever managed skipped records, you typically have a bunch that you always do the same thing with like emails. I'm probably always going to ignore um any skipped records around emails because I have changed them as an organization. We have branded them with our own stuff. we don't necessarily want to change them just because Service Now changed them. Um, so you can now create a skipped record rule around those emails and just automatically skip them. Or perhaps you have um someone who always does your service portal work and they're always going to be the one that manages uh those types of skipped records. You can create a rule so that it just auto assigns those skipped records to them to look at. Um, so those are really handy in managing skipped records. And I think if we move to the next one that brings us to a poll. Uh so uh for this poll it is when are you planning to upgrade to Yokohama and you all are very very quick at answering polls. It's impressive. It it is very impressive especially because it's it's pretty pretty large number of people. Um, we got to 50% in in about oh, five seconds. Y All right, I think I'm gonna cut off the poll. So, it comes in last clicks are coming through. Three, two. Okay, we're done. So, we got a lot of people planning on this uh planning on on upgrading really really soon. Yeah, about% in the next six months. It's all right. Pretty significant. So, yay. All right. Uh, just a couple of bonus tips. Um, and the reason why this is a bonus is because it is not, uh, unfortunately something that everyone can do. Uh, but this is all around um, essentially cloning your production instance um, down to your subproduction instance just prior to your upgrade. So, if you have multiple subproduction instances, this is typically something you can do. Uh, but you're just getting a version of production on the previous release. So the one that you're coming off of um and putting that into a sub prediction instance and you can just use this to confirm um reported issues. So we want to know whether or not the issue that was reported is actually related to the upgrade. So again when you're doing that retrospective you can look back and say these are the issues that were actually part of that upgrade. Um and look at ways to potentially prevent those issues in the future. And again that just helps build that confidence and that pleasant upgrade experience. And this is again not available to everybody because you need to have an instance that you can sit around. But this is I'm going to take a backup and leave it untouched. So not clone but a a backup of what goes in so that you have that comparison for a couple weeks to to validate. This is definitely a new this is now a difference in in functionality in Xan or in in Yokohama or No, it worked the same there too. Yep. Not something new. Not everybody notices everything all the time. No. Um but they are they tend to be extra aware post upgrade. Um so you will find that suddenly all these issues that have existed crop up. Um and it's definitely not intentional. They're just being hyper aware of anything in the system because they're looking for issues post upgrade. Um and then um I've kind of created this basic timeline. It's nice for a little screenshot if you kind of want to see what I've done in my past. Um, but essentially this is all around how to uh prep for that upgrade and that timeline. If I were to actually provide this to those stakeholders, I would be plugging dates in there and some more specifics. But um, you know, we're doing everything from prepping our production in or separate production instances around the cloning and upgrade remediation. So again, I would provide that remediation window. I'd provide the testing window. Um, include the testing information. uh when we would actually do that um that uh production backup down to our subprod instance and then of course upgrade um post upgrade support is also really really great. Um we did not mention that before but uh you know the day after your upgrade if you can kind everyone together have them hyper aware of any issues looking for any issues that may come in. Um, and then of course resuming business as usual, continuing to activate new plugins and apps at that point, continuing your uh regular release cycle, etc. And then the next slide kind of just covers the things that I already covered. It's just in a nice one pager. Um, so I won't necessarily go through all of those again, but uh it's a nice to have if you like snapping screenshots to look back on. Um, so I do like to provide that. and then I will hand it back over to you, Adam, to cover some tooling. Great. Um, and I've seen some of the questions that have come in. Um, if you have some questions for for Jeff or Paige or myself, please put those in the Q&A. We'll we'll try our best to get through them. Uh, and if you if you put in as anonymous, that's fine. Happy to do that. If but if you put it as anonymous, we can't follow up with it. if you put your name in and we're not able to get to it, then we will be able to reach out to you uh in the ne next week sometime to get down to it. Um I want to actually put a plug in too because I don't think I have my slide in here. Uh knowledge, we talked about we talked about knowledge earlier on. Uh Paige, you coming to knowledge? I am. Yes. All right. So, Paige will be knowledge. Any upgrade questions? You want to go find Paige? I'll track her down. Oh, but I'm going to be there, too. Um actually, I think I'll be at the upgrades booth for part of it. So, if you have any questions uh that come up in the next few weeks, please come by and say hi. Jeff, are you coming? I am not going to be there. So, I'll be there in spirit. He'll be there in all right. Uh he'll be answering emails that come through about sessions that that are in there. Uh but if you haven't been to knowledge, it's an amazing experience. And if you are coming, then come by and say hi to Paige. Paige, myself. We'll pass your greetings on to Jeff when we see him next. All right. So, let me get back to the what we were talking about with extra tools. So, a couple things. One of the best tools that you can use is ATF, the automated test framework. It is part of the platform. Please use it. Um, part of that that we want to bring out, even if you are using ATF, two big big enhancements that have come out recently is relative, but what that I want to make sure you're aware of. One is the test generator. So, CL in the store, you can get an app called ATF cloudrunner and test generator or test generator and cloudrunner. I always get those flipped. Awesome tool, free to use inside of Service Now to look at the data that you have and generate regression tests based off of of the data that you have. So, I always like to do this um before I do an upgrade. I take my clone like like Paige said, I have it generate tests across my platform. I let it go. It can take a day or two to run to generate through all the stuff. Generates all these regression tests. Then I do my upgrade. I'm able to run those tests that I just had to press a button to create. And it gives me additional opportunities to detect changes in behavior. I don't like pass or fail for ATF, but changes in behavior, things that are different now than they were before. In addition to my UAT, it just gives me that one extra layer that comes through. Awesome. New new earlier this year as part of ATF um in Creator Pro Plus and now assist for creator, we have test generation. And there's a difference. Test generator is free. Test generation is part of creator uh creator pro plus. It allows me to do uh test creation, test case creation, ATF tests by simply starting with text. An amazing tool. One of the challenges we've had with ATF in the past was that you had to have quite a few clicks to create tests. It took some time. Really useful once you built out that library, but creating a test took some time. We've just dropped that time that that barrier immensely by using test generation where I can just say uh create a ca create a P2 case um opened by somebody with uh without the ITIL role and then make sure it gets routed to the right team whatever whatever the whatever it is put in a few sentences and you can create those automated tests which you run before your upgrade and after upgrade to identify changes in behavior. Sometimes changes are good sometimes they're not. But identifying what there the biggest thing that we want to avoid is surprises. ATF will help you avoid surprises when you upgrade. Um so make sure you're using ATF, you're using cloudr runner and test generator and you definitely want to explore using test generation. It will make your upgrades smoother and faster. U next is upgrade center. So upgrade center brings everything uh together. Uh pa pa I think showed a screenshot of that to to come Make sure you're using that, using the tools that come through. Um, I talked about my safe harbor at the beginning in terms of don't make buying decisions based off of uh things I that are not released. Well, this is one of them. This is an area we're looking to improve and expand to bring more information to you to make those upgrades help you understand what's going on so you can plan and accommodate accordingly. Just like Paige said, looking at the the time of schema changes and understanding, is there something I can do to make that faster? upgrade center helps with that and we are continuing to invest in that to make to give you more information. Um, instance scan, instance scan is great uh to check to do static analysis of your code of your configuration to see do we have an issue. That's something you want to be running all the time. Um, if you have impact health scan very complimentary to this, but instance scans built into your into your instance that you can do on your own. The app manager, the application manager, that is what's showing you what you're entitled to, what you're not entitled to, what updates are available. Make sure you're using that. I I don't know how many people have been around for a while. I I'm one of them. You know, I like to go to Vplugins. Don't go to application manager. It's showing you everything that's available with the store with plugins. More and more information is coming in there. More enhancements are coming to application manager as well. So, make sure you're using that and not uh vplugins or some of the older ways where you can see some information. And a question came in that I am going to see if I can click on answer. Well, I'm I'm going to mark it as answering once we've done this. If you're looking for what's changes are occurred outside of the upgrade window, you want to look at configuration hub. Um, configuration hub gives you an overview uh app by app, scope by scope, uh, which is a bit of a challenge for global. So, ITSM stuff can be a little bit hairy, but the scoped apps that we're using with CSM with HR configuration hub helps you explore what you have configured, what changes are there, and to understand is it something I want to revert. So rather than waiting to a skip uh to have a skip record of something that's changed, configuration helps you manage that outside of the normal upgrade window again to make the to reduce the size of the upgrade window. All right. Uh so again important tools to have documentation is there. Uh there aremies if you were looking for any of these and you type in favorite search engine service now academy configuration hub you'll find an academy on it. Definitely on ATF you'll find lots of content. So lots of great resources for you out there. Uh I want to talk about it again. Releases and upgrades community. So you go to the service now community look uh over on the left you'll find releases and upgrades. Take a look through there you'll see what's new in Yokohama. You'll find you'll be connected to more webinars diving deep into HR CSM ITSM uh different platform functionality that comes through. Take advantage of those right while you're while you're having lunch. listen to me espouse the the amazing benefits of workflow automation or others come through as well see what's there uh this is also where you will find the upgrade the release upgrade kit again we have Yokohama Xanadoo are available I think Washington might still be there though they do take them down after a certain amount of time take a look through that I didn't point this out before this is a PDF that you get there is a link to download the PowerPoint Paige talked about I believe Paige was talking about communicating with your stakeholders and possibly using a deck. Well, if you take this, you'll get a couple screens from us in a PowerPoint format that you can then rip out and say this is what we are getting. Great place to start to start from. So again, we give it we distribute it in power as a PDF. The PowerPoints are available. I believe there is a link directly on that on that PDF to get it. If not, talk to your account exec and they can get you a copy of it. But you can use all the content we're having that to convince you about why this is great. You can also use it to help your stakeholders understand all the amazingness they're going to get. Additional resources for all of our impact customers. If you're going through your first upgrade or it's just or you haven't done this in a while, take a look at the jump start your upgrade accelerator. The jump start your upgrade accelerator talks about some of the stuff we've talked about but goes into more detail. Um, and it's going to help you understand what your um what it's going to be like for you to upgrade um very specifically. So, if you are an impact customer and you have not taken the jump start your upgrade, I would highly recommend do that. Lots of great content uh for jump starts um that are out there, make sure you take a look at what's there. There's uh upgrade accelerator. There's also an ATF one. If you're not using the automated test framework, take a look at that one. Great content there as well. There's just tons and tons of accelerators. If you're in if you have impact, just start going through these. They're going to help you out. Expert services. Hey, do you need help? um we are there we certainly can help you uh if you need a little bit more to go through this and a slide that I am I am missing uh to come through this is now create and in now create there are a lot of plans uh paige showed you some you hopefully you took some screenshots so you'll get the PDF of this later with some example timelines there are example there are uh more than example project plans for your upgrades and lots of other things that you're doing so take make sure you take advantage of what's in now create to help you communicate out what you're going to do with your upgrades how how to help you plan it. I think you can download straight to SPM um or other there's some other tools that are work with great great content and now create to help you plan and communicate as we've talked about in the last in the past hour. Okay. Uh I want to take another minute to actually click through this. We have some more resources for you uh that that come through. Uh, these will be in the PDF that you you'll be able to get after this recording, but they're up there and if you search for them, search for some of these keywords, you'll probably find the documentation without having to add the link. Exactly. Um, but I want to thank you for taking the time to join us. Hopefully, this was helpful for you. Please take the survey that comes up and let us know how we're doing and how we can improve this these sessions for you and for others as we're going forward. And if you are coming to knowledge, please stop by and see Paige and myself and say hello. All right, with that, we'll give you a couple minutes and uh see you next time.